Monday, August 15, 2011

Got the Hammer



I'm currently replaying both NES Zeldas on my Virtual Console. Well, Zelda I is always really fun at the start, where you have lots of optional upgrades to find on the overworld. But after you got the additional Heart Containers, Blue Ring and stuff the game becomes mostly dull dungeon crawling and the dungeons are not much fun.

And Zelda II is one big pile of struggling. The struggle never ends in this game. But you still keep trying, you get better and you will eventually overcome hard obstacles, which is a very rewarding feeling. I'm posting right now, because of one of these milestone, namely getting the Hammer. I already tried that many times on my VC copy, I just couldn't do it... I would get frustrated and eventually give up. But now after some leveling (health 6, sword 4) I've done it without even losing a single life! Way to go.

I'm beginning to understand how I managed to beat this game 15 years ago on the original NES. The only other time I've completely beaten the game was on emulator using cheat codes (which was fun actually). But all my other retail copies of Zelda II - the GBA version, the one that came with the Collector's Edition and the one on my Virtual Console - all remained unbeaten. And in all of them I failed getting the Hammer and shortly lost motivation.

Getting the Hammer is a big milestone for me, because from there the game gets more enjoyable. It opens many shortcuts and gives access to cool new stuff like the Downward Thrust.

Well, I'll see how the game will go from here or what other obstacles will result in frustrating struggle (those damn Blue Iron Knuckles for example).

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